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We are no strangers to the paint game. Any one who has ever readthisblog or seen either of our houses knows that. We also have recently announced that we’re expecting a baby in November, so we’ve begun prepping a spare room.

It was a little less than a year ago that I was upstairs tearing up carpet, one of the first things we did when we moved in. I took an afternoon off and decided to spackle some cracks and repaint the room. We’ve seen some ads for Benjamin Moore’s No-VOC paint, Natura and decided to give it a try in this room, considering a small human being will be inhabiting it at some point.

I found that, just like all of the other paint and primer in one’s that we’ve used, if there is a bold color underneath, you’ll never be able to get away with just one coat. The finish is really great on this paint, and in a room with one window, I could appreciate the no-VOC qualities.

We decided on using a gender neutral color, and found one we both really liked called Sweet Honeydew Melon. I think it really brightens the room, and is that soothing shade of nature we were looking for to fit with our planned woodland theme.

That’s a just a few before and after shots of our recent paint job. Stay tuned to see how the room shapes up as we start furnishing and adding decor.

That’s right. You heard it here first, well, maybe you heard it here second. But either way its true. We’re expecting. I wouldn’t have expected that we’d be where we are today when we started this blog. We went from living in a 1 bedroom apartment, to buying our first house (2 bedrooms for those keeping score) to selling that house, to buying the house we’re in now. In case you were wondering, this one has 4 bedrooms. One of which will be housing a new member of our family sometime soon.

Here’s a few shots of that upstairs room that will become the kid’s bedroom.

There it is after we moved in and ripped up the carpet. We’ve been using the room for storage since then.

We haven’t even painted (our favorite thing) it yet, but we’ve got some plans in mind. Check back here soon to see what we’ve got in store!

The weather is warm and we’re full of energy! Here’s a quick rundown of what we got done around the yard yesterday.

We busted up some remnants of an old fence…

We dug out this drain that was covered in grass and dirt, then replaced with river rocks…

We tore up a dead bush…

…and replaced it with some rhododendron…

…and lava rocks and a hook for a hanging plant…in the future.

We planted some flowers (pansies and snapdragons) in another of our garden spaces…

We mulched the crap out of everything…

We’ve had a fence door that has been giving us trouble since we moved in. It turns out ants were destroying the support piece of wood holding all of the slats together. We quickly destroyed them (not pictured) and replaced the wood. (also not pictured)

That one bottom slat was broken pretty good and was only being held on by the ants’ rotten wood. First though, we replaced all of the nails and capped them with a little wood glue.

This didn’t look great, so once the glue was dried we headed out to find a paint that would match for touch ups. With a little help from our friend in the paint department at Lowes we were able to color match pretty close. In this photo it hasn’t dried yet, but you get the idea.

Even with the new wood in place this hinge was pretty busted up.

After a little reshaping of the hinge and the addition of some new locking washers, its as good as new.

In our humble opinions, the door now works better than ever before. No more getting stuck trying to get into or out of the backyard…

And now we’ll leave you with these random flowers that have sprouted up in the yard…